"Of" is The Devil

I'm getting sick and tired of all the grammatical errors on the Interweb. I've said it before, and I'll say it again...No Child Left Behind my ASS!

It's not "That shouldn't of happened." That's wrong. And stupid. It's "That shouldn't HAVE happened." "Of" is a preposition. "Have" is a verb. See the difference?

"But Scott Colby!" you exclaim. "When I hear people say something like that, it sounds like they're saying 'of.'"

But they aren't. They're actually using a contraction: "That shouldn't've happened."

You'd better remember all this. If I catch any of my loyal blogonauts screwing this up, I'm going to pelt them in the back of the head with a canned ham, steal their pants, and ditch them in the dumpster behind Punters.

Unfortunately, something tells me there's going to be a lot of half-naked people waking up behind Punters bleeding from the back of their skulls in the near future...

Two things that piss me off

1. Now, I hate to sound like an asshole, but...wait, that's not right. Let's try again. I hate to sound like a Republican (ahh, that's better!) but I'm beginning to suspect that those "no cell phones" signs they've hung up every ten feet in the gym should probably be written in languages other than English. It seems like everytime some loud douche bag violates this rule, he ain't speaking the President's English. Think that's racist or bigoted? I guarantee that if I were to keep track of all the dumb fucks who insist on pulling their phones out in the gym, 80% of them would be having conversations in a foreign language. And I honestly don't care what language you speak, even when you're speaking it into a cell phone when you're not supposed to. What I do care about, however, is that you shut the fuck up and stop annoying me, and if it takes signs in multiple languages to accomplish that goal, then that's what it takes to accomplish that goal.
2. I am beginning to have a very strong dislike for people who don't listen to the announcements on the T. Getting off the train at Government Center tonight, the driver had to announce five times that this was the last stop and people should be getting off before one group of English-speaking, headphone-free dumbasses got out of their seats. I think after the third such announcement, the driver should seal the doors and release the nerve gas. The T should then sell these dumbasses to reality TV producers to help pay off some of their debt.
   

Top Ten Geek Presents

Today on the Interweb I read an article about the Top Ten Holiday Presents for Geeks. It was horrible. The number one item was a personalized Google logo. Some jackass actually got paid to write this shit, and he obviously only spent five minutes on it. I hope whoever it is chokes on his paycheck.

Luckily, Scott Colby is here to raise the overall quality of writing here on the Interweb, and he does it for free! And I'm not stopping at just ten items, because Scott Colby and never-ending bulleted lists go together like hooker boots and short skirts!

I now present to you Scott Colby's Big Honkin' List of Good Shit to Give People Who Like To Push Buttons Incessantly While Eating Lots of Doritos and Drinking Red Mountain Dew:

• A High Definition Back Hair Trimmer. If this list applies to someone you know, chances are pretty good he (face it, that ain't a she) probably has grooming issues. The HD sticker is just a trick to get your unkempt mouth breather to actually use the damn thing. Companion gift: A tarp to cover the bathroom floor.
  
• Pocket Protector with Eject Button. Geeks are lazy. This is the one and only pocket protector with a gas powered launcher controlled by a button on the side of a styling Tazmanian Devil digital watch. Push the button, and the geek's favorite writing utensil is shot out of his pocket so he can catch it on the way down. Companion gift: Safety goggles.
• A shiny new blog. You know, to get them away from MySpace. Companion gift: Remedial English classes at the local community college.
• A Bluetooth Toilet Flushing Remote. Again, dorkazoids are lazy, and they seem almost hypnotized by anything with a little blue light. Companion gift: 802.11g enabled plunger with scroll wheel (because you know they're going to drop the remote down the bowl eventually).
• KITT from Knight Rider. Companion gift: David Hasselhoff's hair. It still ain't good, but it'll most likely be an improvement.
• The Microsoft Zune. Using the Zune's wireless music sharing capabilities, everyone around your favorite geek can join in and laugh at his horrible music collection! Companion gift: A helmet of some sort, to offer at least a modicum of protection when some big tough biker dune catches your geek bobbing his head to "London Bridges."

Told you I wasn't going to stop at ten.

The Best Toaster Ever asked me to post this

I was going to sign him up for his own G-mail account so he could put this in on his own, but now Google insists on sending confirmation numbers to cellphones via text messages for new G-mail accounts. Google and their stupid little ads that I can't believe anyone in their right mind would actually click on can kiss my ass, just like the jerkoff I saw actually kick the T earlier this evening when it wouldn't let his lard ass on.

Here we go...

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Hello ladies.

The Best Toaster Ever is in the mood for romance, and he's taking applications.

See, it's been a rollercoaster ride of a year for me. I fondly remember the carefree days I spent on the shelf at Target, wooing the lovely young blender across the aisle. She was a tough nut to crack, what with her five variable speeds, her easy-to-read gradations, her slick chrome shell, and the intensity of her come-hither dials making her aisle 9's untouchable equivalent to Marilyn Monroe. But though she seemed soft and beautiful on the outside, her insane ice crushing capabilities and her resistance to all but the toughest stains made her a bit of a tiger. Meeeeeeow! Of course, yours truly was up to the challenge, and the time we spent together with the other appliances making fun of all the people in the store who were a few lucky chromosomes above the Wal-Martian level were among the happiest days of my life.

But alas, it wasn't meant to be. She was whisked off her feet by a man willing to spend more money to keep her happy, and I was left to weather the retail storm cold and alone. I will never forget the price of her love, that terrible $29.99 that my heart could give but my wallet couldn't. Even the hilarity of the occasional Wal-Martian confused by all the red couldn't salve my wounds.

And then a guy who seemed like he might occasionally be amusing took me home to live with him. He gave me a piece of prime real estate next to the sink, and the coffee pot and I became fast friends. And truth be told, Scott was mildly amusing. The coffee pot and I often placed bets on what his blood alcohol level would be when he finally stumbled home, and we'd laugh in merriment as he'd swear mightily about some crap he's never actually going to get published, and we'd laugh even harder when he'd imply that he was going to marry a girl with a yacht rather than a girl that's as big as a yacht. Things were good, and though they weren't quite good enough to heal my broken heart, it was almost enough.

But now I'm bored. All Scott wants to do now is sit on the couch and drink beer and eat pot pies and watch those stupid ass Hulk Hogan DVDs. Just to spite him, I even cheered for the Ultimate Warrior when he beat the Hulkster at Wrestlemania VI. Then I looked the Ultimate Warrior up on Wikipedia, found out that he'd legally changed his name to Warrior, that his children were stuck with the last name Warrior, and that he'd turned into some Born Again right-wing nut job who'd probably feel right at home in the Spanish Inquisition, and I apologized to Scott and promised I'd never cheer for the Ultimate Warrior again.

But that's neither here nor there. I need to get out more...and what better way to do it than with a pretty young thing of the fairer sex?

So ladies, what's it gonna be? A cold night alone...or a steaming plate of waffles? Going to the Foggy Goggle with some douche bag that only tries to dance to "Gold Digger" and won't buy you anything better than Bud Light...or a warm, gooey strudel?

I guarantee you won't regret it...I'll just have to get rid of the coffee pot so we can have some privacy (maybe I can hook him up with the espresso maker in the pantry).

-Yours forever, baby
tBTe
The Best Toaster Ever

Final Fantasy XII

There was a time when I was extremely excited about this game, despite the fact that I didn't like a single thing I heard about it in the umpteen previews I read. "It's Final Fantasy," I told myself. "Everything will be alright." So I preordered the game, which I've never, ever done for any game before (closest I'd come was sneaking away from work for a few during lunch to pick up Halo 2 the day it launched), and I eagerly counted down the days to its release. Nick will tell you it was pretty ridiculous.

And then I actually played it, and it sucked the excitement right out of me. Forty-five hours later, I'm seriously thinking about switching back to the original Shadow Hearts.

I don't care what anybody says; this is not Final Fantasy.

The battle system, first off, is all over the place. It lacks the refinement of the old turn-based system, making fights feel like out-of-control free-for-alls. Strategy against tougher foes seems restricted to this method: get your ass kicked, leave to level up, try again. If your characters simply aren't strong enough, there's no way in fuck you can possibly outsmart the opposition and pull out an upset. None of your moves hit hard enough, and none of your protection abilities protect you well enough. And the lack of any real strategy leads to an almost complete lack of drama. The only time I find the combat exciting is when I've got one or two hits left on a boss and all my characters are about to die, and it's one shot left to determine whether I win or if I have to start over and spend another half hour pounding on this fucker to see if I'm lucky enough to be able to beat it. I guess the drama comes from not wanting to have to go through that whole thing again.

Contrast this, say, to Final Fantasy X, where I'd regularly get lost in the tension of a boss battle and not notice certain important things, like the fact that it got dark outside or that it's time to feed the Best Toaster Ever. And every boss had that one trick that you had to figure out in order to beat him.

But the big problem is the story. I've stuck with the game as long as I have because I figured eventually it was going to go somewhere. We've got a princess trying to reestablish her kingdom amidst a war between two huge empires...and with her, we have a bunch of cardboard cutouts. I genuinely don't give a crap about any of them, and the game doesn't seem to give a crap that I don't give a crap. Take, for example, the scene where the rabbit lady goes back to her village and is universally shunned for leaving. She obviously knew this was going to happen when she made that decision...but we never find out why she did what she did. What, exactly, was her motivation? Here was an opportunity to take one of those cardboard cutouts and give it a little life...and it was completely, utterly wasted. Just piss poor storytelling, and something you'll never see in any of my future best sellers.

This lack of interesting characters is a huge difference from previous entries in the series. In VIII, I really wanted to see what was going to happen to Squall and Rinoa, despite the fact that I absolutely hated the whole "we all knew each other but we forgot because of the magic we use duh." In X, I wanted to see what was going to become of everybody, and I enjoyed seeing these people interact during their travels (I'm convinced that the people in XII never actually talk to each other...ever...about anything, despite the fact that they're spending all this time together). I'll even admit to getting a little misty when Yuna stumbled right through the fading Tidus at the end, and I really wanted to see if she could find a way to bring him back in X-2.

Ok, I'm through whining...the Best Toaster Ever wants chocolate cream pie.